GENERALLY, when an England team crashes out of a major sporting tournament, we like to have a scapegoat. Whether it was David Beckham with his petulant kick at Diego Simeone in 1998, Stuart Pearce and Gareth Southgate with their decisive penalty misses or, more recently, Chris Robshaw and his bungled line-out call against Wales, failure has resulted in a fall guy.

So as Ben Stokes watched Carlos Brathwaite’s fourth successive six disappear over the boundary rope on Sunday, it felt inevitable that the backlash was about to begin. Hearteningly, however, it has subsequently failed to materialise.

The mockery directed at Stokes has been restricted to a handful of keyboard warriors, West Indies’ resident loudmouth Marlon Samuels and the New Zealand radio hosts who have been suspended after broadcasting a conversation with Stokes’ mother that she believed to be private. Here at home, and certainly from within the cricketing community, Stokes has been showered with sympathy rather than blame.

That’s a very grown-up and peculiarly un-English way of handling things, but it reflects both the admiration that exists for Stokes as a cricketer and the respect the Durham all-rounder had built up thanks to his heroics in the earlier stages of the World Twenty20.

Let’s be honest, Stokes is pretty much the cricketer we’d all secretly like to be. In the last few years, a myth has become established suggesting we want all of our sports stars to be whiter-than-white role models. It’s nonsense. Give me a Jamie Vardy over a James Milner any time.

We relate to Stokes precisely because he has rough edges. He wears his heart on his sleeve, as evidenced by the post-match scenes in Kolkata that saw him fighting to hold back the tears. We like the belligerence that is evident in both his batting and bowling, and the spikiness that manifests itself in those snarling stares at opposition batsmen. And if he occasionally batters a locker, at least it shows how much he cares.

The comparisons are almost lazy, but there are undeniably elements of Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff in Stokes, and they were complex characters who were afforded a fair degree of leeway as they successfully retained the public’s affection. It says much that Stokes is on the path to achieving similar status despite not turning 25 until June. If he remains a part of the England set-up for most of the next decade, he really could turn into an all-time great.

He certainly has the talent, and that’s the other main reason why his standing hasn’t been shattered by Sunday’s drama. England produced some moments of real magic during their run to the T20 final, but they would not have been facing the West Indies in the first place had it not been for Stokes.

He had bowled the final over in England’s previous three matches, conceding three runs against New Zealand in the semi-final, four in the winner-takes-all contest against Sri Lanka and eight against Afghanistan as he shut out the game. In those three matches, his 11 overs had contained just two sixes.

He also creamed a maximum himself from the only ball he faced against Sri Lanka, and while he never quite managed a huge score with the bat, he consistently scored at much more than a run-a-ball to help England’s middle order kick on.

He is part of hugely-exciting young England side that has the potential to dominate in all forms of the game for years to come, and along with Joe Root and Moeen Ali is one of the few players to consistently contribute in all formats. He can certainly be forgiven one aberration, even if he would no doubt do things differently had he the opportunity to turn back the clock.

So where does he go next? Back to Chester-le-Street is the easy answer, and while he will not be involved in Durham’s season opener with Somerset this weekend, he has been pencilled in for a rare County Championship appearance when Durham entertain Middlesex on April 24.

Is he mentally strong enough to cope with the fall-out from the weekend? Stuart Broad has probably experienced the closest thing to what Stokes is currently going through after Yuvraj Singh clubbed him for six sixes in an over at the inaugural World Twenty20 tournament in 2007.

Like Stokes, Broad was at a formative stage of his career back then, and just as he successfully recovered to become the world’s leading Test bowler, so he is convinced Stokes possesses sufficient resolve and character to bounce back.

“The mind-set I came out with from my experience was that it didn’t make me a bad bowler,” said Broad. “And four balls don’t make Ben a bad bowler either.

“What you’ve got to accept is that you will get jibes here and there and people shouting over the fence, and Stokesy will have to deal with that. That’s professional sport, but he’s the sort of character who will cope.”

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EVEN without such a memorable final, the World Twenty20 had already been a superb competition. Dramatic, devoid of dead rubbers and just the right length to build to a climax while constantly commanding attention, it should be a template for future tournaments.

There has already been talk about T20 potentially heralding the demise of Test cricket, but I still believe the two formats are distinct enough to co-exist.

To me, it’s the 50-over game that increasingly looks like an anachronism. Neither one thing nor the other, that’s the form of cricket that could well be consigned to history before too long.

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IT’S Grand National day tomorrow, so don’t forget to pick up your Northern Echo for a full colour pinstickers’ guide. All my tips are in there, so hopefully there’ll be a repeat of two years ago when Pineau De Re was flagged up at 33-1.

I still haven’t conclusively settled on my final selection, but OLBG have offered me a £25 each-way charity bet with any proceeds going to the Injured Jockeys Fund. I’ve gone for O’Faolains Boy, another 33-1 shot. Take a look at www.grand-national-guide.co.uk for more 2016 Grand National tips.